AMD/Xilinx PYNQ Bootcamp

A week-long embedded systems bootcamp for students aged 13–18, delivered with a mix of talks, hands-on tutorials with Jupyter Notebooks, and specialised breakout sessions. Topics included microprocessors, FPGAs, basic I/O, audio processing, computer vision, robotics, and Python. The students then completed their own hackathon projects on the theme of sustainability.

I wrote and hosted the day 1 material, getting the students started with their devices and PYNQ platform, Python fundamentals, and using basic device I/O. I also helped direct and edit the materials for the specialised breakout sessions. All sessions were driven by active learning, where each student could immediately apply new concepts with their own embedded device. Differentiated learning also played an important role given the age range of the participants. The group-based hackathon element encouraged collaborative learning, with supervision only on request.

The success of this event resulted in the bootcamp becoming an annual event, running on the same foundations for a further 4 years.

This article offers some reflection from the attendees, including:

For me one of the most interesting things was the session on computer vision because you can take a look at all of these different objects and you can get the computer to find out what it is – the programming that drives that is really interesting.

🌍 Event